Structural analysis of airborne flux estimates over a region

Abstract

Aircraft-based observations of turbulence fields of velocity, moisture, and temperature are used to study coherent turbulent structures. Results over grassland, wetland, and moist and dry agricultural land, show that nonlinear detrending may provide a more physically realistic description of structures. Significant differences are observed between structure size and associated relative flux contribution, between moist and dry areas, with smaller structures playing a more important role over the moist areas. Structure size generally increases with height, as spatial reorganization from smaller structures into larger ones takes place. This coincides with a gradual loss of surface "signature' (position and clustering of plumes above localized source areas). -from Authors